The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Lee Shau Kee Library, Center for the Arts, and Publishing Technology Center jointly present

My Heart is Flying

When we gaze at the distant stars, we are actually looking up at our eternal home.

Faced with the vast cosmos, human beings always ponder upon the ultimate questions: Where are we from? Where are we going?

This painting series is inspired by the dream of flying of mankind, and envisions the ultimate return of goodness and beauty to the liberated soul.

Dare to believe that in the deep and vast universe, there certainly live some free people, where the sky is eternally open, and the world is completely free.

This is a delightful creative process, rational at times and emotional at others. I strived to be more fluid and precise in expressing my thoughts in pursuit of perfection.

Techniques can speak accurately for the artist, allowing figural transformation between reality and fantasy. In the rearrangement of objects, the unseen is revealed, forming novel, poetic and metaphysical imageries and meanings.

This is also a purely spiritual experience, logical and illogical at the same time. One can say that it is a journey of the heart through time without a starting point and an end, allowing the body and the mind to roam about vast lands and the unfathomed sky. What I captured are the images of transcendental existence and of the purified soul.

Riding with the wind; my heart is flying.

Chen Keng

Creating a series of fifty oil paintings in less than two years is no easy task. Fortunate for HKUST, the renowned painter Chen Keng has set this goal for himself and we all share and celebrate his achievement in this exhibition My Heart is Flying.

Flying has always been a dream of humankind. Thanks to incessant experiments and breakthroughs following the Industrial Revolution, this dream came true a little more than a century ago. While the success of aviation relies heavily on the work of scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs, artists and many others have also offered plenty of imagination and enthusiasm along the way. Chen proves this with My Heart is Flying.

Chen looks into the history of flying, digging into the wisdom and imagination of humankind of the past five thousand years. He examines the idea of flying across time, religions, civilizations, and disciplines, drawing inspirations from the greatest thinkers and literature traditions of the East and the West. All of these remind us of the humanistic and metaphysical side of any technological advancement, and the reason why we have been able to make those achievements.

Living in the 21st century, we are confronted with more challenges than ever. The history of flying has taught us that the contemplation of the impossible precipitates the possible, dreams come before reality, and the arts have always been and are an indispensable part of science and technology. This timely exhibition at HKUST provides us with the most beautiful illustrations for one of the greatest achievement of humankind and highlights the ideal of our University in the new era: contributing to the humankind through ceaseless innovation and creativity. As a fellow aerospace engineering and science professional, I salute Mr. Chen for his creativity, optimism and spirit!

Professor Wei Shyy
President
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

It was my honour to be introduced to the renowned painter Chen Keng in an exhibition organized by the Center for the Arts two years ago. As I gradually discovered Chen Keng’s artworks, I was deeply impressed by their profound humanistic spirit. Having worked as a painter for more than thirty years, Chen has pondered upon many diverse themes. While his early works are instilled with nostalgic resonance, documenting the process of self-discovery and stylistic establishment of a young painter, his recent works are charged with historic and humanistic contemplation, symbolizing the mature artist’s empathy with world values and his original interpretation of such concepts.

My Heart is Flying painting series proves once again the enchanting power of Chen Keng’s works. In order to unfold the fantasy and aspiration for flying of mankind over thousands of years, Chen not only investigated into the huge heritage of texts and images across time and cultures but also conducted an industrious research into history. Nevertheless, Chen did not overwhelm his paintings with details. On the contrary, minimal figures and forms were assembled in surreal configurations graced with subdued lyrical colour tones, likening his paintings to Giorgio Morandi’s metaphysical art. In the scrutiny of the length and breadth of human thoughts and history, the painter put certain critical episodes to a standstill and imbued his purified compositions with contemplative subtlety, thus inducing the audience to spiritual transcendence. The painter, moreover, dared not to forget the heavy toll on mankind for flying free, while celebrating the success of the material world to make the dream of flying come true, the question, ‘Is our heart really flying?’, lingers in the air.

What role can the arts play in a university focused on science, technology and business disciplines? How can the arts help students grow? These questions have always been on my mind. Since the Center for the Arts joined the Center for Education Innovation last year, making possible synergies between the arts and the other disciplines has become a new direction of our work, and presenting this artist-in-residence project is the first attempt towards this goal. Responding to the ever-growing need for interdisciplinary talents of the world today, the Center for the Arts is privileged to work with the Library to present the cross-disciplinary artworks of Chen Keng.

We are grateful to Mr. Chen Keng for his great contribution to HKUST!

Dr. Anna Kwong
Program Director, Center for the Arts, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

It is with great honor that I write a message for this exhibition. After almost two years of devoted work, Chen Keng is holding his exhibition of oil paintings in our Library this fall.

An acclaimed oil painter from Guangzhou, China, Chen accepted our invitation to lead an artist-in-residence project at HKUST in 2016. Under this special project organized by the HKUST Center for the Arts (CFA), Chen created 50 pieces of oil paintings for display at our University. The Library was privileged to be asked to show Chen’s works in our Gallery and to partner with CFA to hold a series of events in conjunction with this exhibition.

Since the very beginning, our Library has been active in promoting art education on campus. The University’s first art exhibition was organized by the Library in 1992 which featured the works of Huang Miaozi (黃苗子) and Yu Feng (郁風), two masters of Chinese painting and calligraphy. This exhibition received great response and supported our advocacy for the value of arts to the students. Over the years, we continued with our efforts to engage students successfully through various arts and cultural activities, including exhibitions, tours, talks, demonstrations, and workshops. We also expanded our art space to create more exhibition possibilities. Our University puts a strong emphasis on our students’ holistic development, of which art education is an indispensable part. It is gratifying to see that our Library has been able to contribute to the University’s mission in this regard.

Exhibiting Chen’s works in our Library is a great delight and certainly will provide our students with a special opportunity to appreciate the works of, and to learn from, a great master. Chen’s oil painting exhibition is not the first of its kind in our Library. But what makes his exhibits so unique is that they were all painted around the theme of “Flying”. “Flying” to Chen has a very deep meaning. It is not just about physical motions, but also a release of our souls and minds. Looking at Chen’s works, one will be amazed to see how he articulates man’s flying dreams in drawings and transforms our pursuit for freedom into art. He magically combines rationality and sensibility, arts and technology, religion and science, resulting in an emotional but logical world full of imagination and technical mastery. Under his artful yet rational manifestations, the paintings vividly reveal our long-cherished quest for virtue, beauty, and eternity.

The exhibition of Chen Keng promises to be a feast for your eyes. I invite you to personally experience this flying journey which the painter has vibrantly drawn for you.

Diana Chan
University Librarian, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Heart Striking Works

Chen Keng is not only an exquisite painter with outstanding oil painting technique, but also one of the few in Hong Kong with deep thoughts and humanistic sensibility… in my mind, he is a true artist.

One may find me exaggerating, but there is no better proof than the hundreds of paintings that Chen created over the years: the Under the Bean Shed series is rich in bucolic flavor, the hard-won Passionate Tibet series almost cost life, the Time series records the life stories of the young painter, the Images of CUHK series narrates his encounter with the tertiary institute, the Spiritual Imagery series is charged with romantic mood, the Measuring the Orient series searches for the infinite through the finite, the 33.6-meter long epic oil painting scroll Dream of an Expedition/ Thirteen Factories of Guangzhou unfolds the dream of maritime adventures… and finally on exhibition today, My Heart is Flying series, in which history reverberates, the future is envisioned, and the freedom of the mind is aspired.

Appreciating these works is like thumbing through a monumental and fascinating literary masterpiece, or watching different scenes of a magnificent theatrical performance. I meditate as I fix my eyes one by one on the framed tableaus; I listen carefully to the fine sound of each sentence of this soundless language…

Chen and I share the deep veneration for history, doubt about the present and aspirations to the future. These works strike my heart and soul, so many of them stir up my emotions. The feeling and thoughts of the painter resonate in my mind and cause me to fantasize. You will feel the power of his art through the paintings and the images in this catalogue.

I recall having the same emotional commotion when I saw some great works in the past, e.g. the Tibetan series of Chen Danqing, National Soul – Ode to Qu Yuan of Zhu Naizheng, Father of Luo Zhongli, The Spring Wind has Awaken of He Duoling, the Maple Tree pictured story book of Chen Yiming and others, the grandiose fresco Song of Life at Beijing International Airport of Yuan Yunsheng; these are works of profound significance and remain fresh in my memory. Today, Chen’s My Heart is Flying is of no less significance and will surely be remembered in the history of art.

For this, I salute Mr. Chen Keng with my deepest respect!

Shen Ping
Director, China Artists Association
Vice Chairman, Hong Kong Art Association

Flying over Time

A man named Leonardo was on the road from Florence to Fiesole in a spring of over 500 years ago. Suddenly, he saw a bird of prey skimming over his head. He started to gaze at that free creature, which glided over a large group of red roofs and disappeared in the forest of Monte Ceceri. Among the many bird sketches drawn by the Italian for his study of flying, it is likely to include that raptor named cortone.

Leonardo da Vinci, the great pioneer in exploring human flight, is one of the countless dreamers of flying. Today, when this dream has long been realized, another painter, Chen Keng, uses a magnificent set of paintings to show the flying dreams of mankind. In my opinion, the spiritual meaning of this series of paintings is comparable to that of the growth rings of giant trees, commemorative monuments, or the archives of museums. The many images in the series, from Greek mythology and ancient pyramids, to da Vinci’s manuscripts and kid’s paper planes, to kites and aircrafts, form a wing in the sky to soar above the river of time. This imagery reminds me of the famous sigh of Confucius, “Time flies like a river, by day and by night!”

But water and time are not just vanishing. There must be something going on over time: the evolution of human nature. The pursuit of the dream of flying implies the direction and trajectory of human evolution. We liberated ourselves from the natural evolution of a biological species, and began to pursue human evolution, starting from modelling on God. Divinity is actually the idealization of humanity. Before the Wright brothers, flying freely had always been the exclusive nature of God. Human beings wished to fly in order to acquire certain abilities of God, including speed and freedom, overlooking all things from above and coming as close as possible to the heavenly bodies. Our body is heavy but our soul is light, and flying brings to reality the wonderful unity of the soul and the flesh. It is comparable to the most beautiful scene glorified in a prose of the Tang Dynasty, in which the evening glow accompanies a lonely duck along its flight. No wonder our pioneers of flying were all infatuated with the blue sky. Leonardo once said, “Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.” To me, the dream of flying goes through the whole evolution history of mankind, from the evolution of the body, to that of the brain, and finally of humanity.

Now, being the most intelligent creature on earth, human beings are inevitably confronted with the ultimate philosophical questions from Plato: Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going?

Our life is likely to have come from the starry sky, because the seeds of life, amino acids, might have been brought to the earth by a comet. In the future, human beings will surely sail to the boundless universe, just like the Greeks who once sailed to the Mediterranean Sea and Columbus to the Atlantic. Therefore, returning to the starry sky may be the final destination of the civilizations on earth. The human dream of flying alludes to our homesickness towards the universe. Thus, flying also signifies the investigation into our origins and the query about the ultimate fate of all human beings.

The third meaning of the dream of flying points to the aspiration and pursuit of freedom of the humankind.

From this series of paintings, we can find some disturbing images, such as doves and barbed wires, a little girl bound by thorns, feathers falling from the sky, angels with broken wings, and so on. These images tell us that the Trail to Freedom is by no means a smooth road. As is pointed out by a monologue in the movie Shawshank Redemption, “Some birds aren’t meant to be caged, because the light of freedom shines on their feathers.” It is the fate of mankind to live between restraint and liberation, imprisonment and freedom, and to fight against fate eternally.

Chen’s flight series has drawn an arc of time. The human pursuit of the dream of flying forms this arc, which perfectly matches the path of human evolution, the path to confront the ultimate philosophical questions, and the Trail of Freedom. It is hard and rugged, yet full of hope and imagination. Today, standing on the interface between the past and the future, we tend to take the achievements of the great ancestors for granted, and to overlook their days in the dark. Therefore, we forget that we are also pursuing and extending the arc of time. This outstanding painting series reminds us that dreams set us free rather than impair us with an ignoble existence. History is evolving ceaselessly in the hands of the living generation. The imagination and courage, the pursuit of values and commitments of all of us will determine the direction and achievement of mankind along the arc of time.

Dr. Peng Zhixiang
Art critic
Professor of Dentistry, Sun Yat-sen University

The Images of Flight

In this series of fifty rectangular frames, Mr. Chen Keng, the well-known painter from Guangzhou, captures the different modes of flight. The fall from grace is depicted as a reversal of flight in which a mighty being’s wings fail to lift. The winged victory of Samothrace, the mutilated Greek masterpiece that graces the Louvre, though headless and with a wing broken, still has not lost its strength to fly. Mr. Chen depicts both these figures as representing two different aspects of the metaphor of wings. Many images of the theme of flight encompassing mechanical, literal, and surrealist representations characterise this collection. A wingless floating image of a smiling girl as her dwelling place drifts away, as well as a depiction of a winged mythological figure are two of the most arresting images in this series. This collection of thought provoking images of flight is itself a product of an artistic flight of inspired imagination. Immerse yourself in an artistic experience organized for you by Mr. Chen on the various facets and moods of flight.

Humans are creatures that can imagine. They flutter around and realise some of their fantasies. Many of those fantastic ideas die in the first attempt itself like the fatal flight of a dragonfly close to the earth’s surface which Mr. Chen has very skillfully captured in these paintings. There are also predators like kites, which the painter has painted cleverly against a white and marine blue background. In the painting the bird is positioned in a way that allows the viewer to imagine its imminent sweeping down at its hapless prey. Ironically, flight is life giving, both for the dragonfly as well as for the kite.

From the dawn of human history, one idea that has constantly appeared in many versions in mythological tales is a human being’s insatiable desire to lift him/herself upwards to join with all that move up in the sky, perpetually travelling in defiance of all the earth-bound limits. In Renaissance art, Mr. Chen captures Leonardo da Vinci’s version of that unappeasable human desire to fly and transcend our bounded being. His painting labeled Da Vinci attempts to simultaneously portray a dream world made up of balloons, above Da Vinci’s geometric representation of a wing with his Latin comments on it taken from his notebooks. The story of human desire to defy gravity is not yet completed. What was achieved by the Wright Brothers and where we stand now in relation to their invention, is captured by Mr. Chen in an unparalleled imaginative depiction of a gigantic mathematical text with diagrams and a scientist’s scribbling, which eerily forms the background for an artificial satellite that navigates through infinite space.

These are the few of the many beautiful and evocative depictions of flight in this skillfully crafted series by Mr. Chen.

Dr. KP Shankaran
Professor of Philosophy (retired), St. Stephens College, Delhi University, India

A Painstaking Ode to Freedom

In 2016, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Center for the Arts (CFA) held the “Small Oil Paintings by Lake Lu School Artists from Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Taiwan Exhibition”. Chen Keng, the Vice President of Guangzhou Municipal Artist Association and a scholarly oil painter, was invited to the opening ceremony. On this occasion, he mentioned about his long-cherished but unrealized aspiration to create a series of painting on the theme of the freedom of flying of the humankind. This idea was immediately supported by CFA and HKUST Library and eventually developed into the Artist-in-Residence 2018 project. Being a member of Guangzhou Municipal Artist Association and living in Hong Kong, I naturally became the coordinator of the project, working closely with both sides and helping Chen with his research on the theme. Over the past two years, I have observed and witnessed the painstaking process of the birth of the exhibits.

Chen’s creation this time is a long-term exploration into the human thoughts of flying freely. It is a spiritual process in which individuality is constantly probed, enriched and condensed. The artist uses impressionism and visualization to convey a deeper philosophical meaning, letting people feel the significance beyond the visual imagery, inspiring further self-exploration among viewers. The paintings are composed in golden ratio. The novel, asymmetrical approach evokes a unique charm, creating a rhythm which enhances the dynamism and aesthetic of the images. The works are accompanied by a concise narrative, presenting a poetic fusion of words and imagery. The paintings’ reconfiguration of objects expresses an infinite supernatural surrealism that goes beyond time and space, creating a sense of mystery and contradiction with strong visual impact. Through symbolic imagery, the paintings express human beings’ desire to soar freely despite the arduous journey in achieving this ideal. They reveal antithetical concepts in the world: existence and illusion, sweetness and bitterness, conflict and harmony, confinement and freedom, and many other states, provoking thought, reminiscence and imagination. The paintings are punctuated by minute, intricate details. At the same time, the kaleidoscope of bright, vivid colors conjures up a sense of effervescence, resulting in majestic and ethereal compositions. This allows the viewer’s aesthetic experience to go beyond the senses, and sublimate to a higher level of thought and appreciation, bringing pleasure and relief to the soul.

The murmurs and whispers resonate in my heart. My mind flies.

Hau Siu-ching
Art critic
Special Correspondent of “Hong Kong Art”

Officiating Guests

Mr. LI Ri Chao, Deputy Director of Memorial Hall of Lingnan School of Painting and Vice Chairman of Guangzhou Municipal Artist Association
Mr. WONG Hau Kwei, Ink Artist
Mr. SHEN Ping, Director of China Artists Association and Vice Chairman of Hong Kong Art Association
Mr. CHEN Keng, Oil Artist
Professor Wei SHYY, President, HKUST
Ms. Diana CHAN, University Librarian, HKUST
Professor Chih-Chen CHANG, Director of Center for Education Innovation, HKUST
Mr. Thomas NG, Director of Publishing Technology Center, HKUST

Gallery Tour

The tours will be guided by Mr. Chen Keng, who will introduce his exhibits and discuss the inspirations for creating the paintings. He will also explain the underlying themes of the exhibition and techniques in creating these art pieces.

Dates & Times:    Sept. 20, 2018 (1:00 – 2:00 p.m.) 
Oct. 11, 2018 (1:00 – 2:00 p.m.) 
Venue:    Ping Yuan and Kinmay W Tang Gallery
Presenter:    Mr. Chen Keng
Language:    Cantonese supplemented with Putonghua
Enquiries:    2358-6710

Students may attain 1-hour credit for the HLTH1010 Healthy Lifestyle Course after completing the tour.

The following workshops are offered to HKUST students and staff only. HKUST students may attain 2-hour attendance in the “Activities” module in Wellness & Personal Enrichment of the HLTH1010 Course after completing each workshop.